Wondrous Strange [Dreams, Madness, Spirits]

[beejazz]

I'm starting a campaign this Friday and I was hoping to use some crazy awesome cosmology with the Far Realms, the Dreamscapes, and the Spirit world. Aside from that I suck at starting campaigns, there is way too little stuff out there for a campaign like this. Please help!

The Cosmology: You've got the basics. I'm using the aforementioned planes plus the material, shadow and ethereal. I want to make this stuff a bigger deal. I want templates for the denizens of each plane (there is already pseudonatural; we need something like that for spirits and dreams). I want help with outsiders for each plane (new varieties of Quori, lesser varieties of Daelkyr, greater varieties of Kaorti, and just about anything for spirits) and where these might fit in summoning lists. I want to know how existing monsters are involved in the cosmology (are they native to or descended from another plane? what still fits better with the material plane? aberrations? yuan ti? anything?). Also, updates of stuff from oriental adventures, updates of psionic stuff from Fiend Folio (because they never updated those psionics), and updates of ghostwalk stuff would all help. ALOT.

The campaign: We're using pregen characters. We've got an archivist loaded down with dream related feats from Heroes of Horror. We've got a slyth (from Underdark, with an oozelike alternate form) dread necromancer. We've got a half-giant monk. We've got a gloaming bard. And we'll probably have a telepath  or other psion and a spirit shaman. Plus maybe a fighter and some stuff.

My idea is that the archivist works interpreting the dreams of the royal family, and is one of several mage advisors to the royal family. He sees that something bad might soon happen to the king's nephew. The other diviners prophesy that [the adventurers, all of whom are in some way down on their luck] will be the ones to fix this by first [first adventure... I was thinking to consult a dusk hag, who would send them to retrieve her eye or some artifact from a nearby dungeon]. Also, the necromancer got put in a bottle for his crimes against humanity 300 years ago, and was only released on the condition of a near total memory wipe.

I need to know a bunch of stuff. Like what dungeon the hag sends them to, what the artifact is that she wants back, what mosters are at the dungeon, and why they want the same artifact. Also, what the hag will say and what danger the king's nephew is in. Also, more backstory for the other characters. ALso, how to tie in the cosmology (ESPECIALLY the plane of dreams).

Please help! Also, I figured that alot of this would be a useful project for other members. Especially the monsters, templates, and updates.

[beejazz]

Well, it's been delayed a day, but I could still use some help.

[DeeL]

Do you have access to Lords of Madness?  If the Far Realms figure prominently, it comes highly recommended.  

Here's another thread that I'm going to try to keep up with.  Combining the dreamscape with Ghostwalk material...

Beejazz, you rawk.

[beejazz]

Yeah, I got a PDF of LoM. Man, that book was the shit!

And I've been meaning to run something like this for-freaking-ever.

[beejazz]

Grrr! Only two people showed, so we played Final Fantasy Tactics and Twisted Metal: Star Wars instead.

Anyways, I was thinking that the dungeon the dusk hag will send the PCs to will be a yuan-ti temple. There'll be a temple complex (previously occupied by something else and with its own signifigance) that has been buried under jungle and has partially collapsed, opening up into natural tunnels with an underground stream leading out to the coast. In the natural tunnels is the calcified skull and brain of a ridiculously old (and RIDONKULOUSLY big) black or green dragon (or maybe one of those gem dragon things). The brain is still semi-conscious. Not only does it act as a portal to its own dreamscape, but it also plays a crucial role in the transformation of cultists into yuan-ti.

I still need to figure out what the temple is doing here, what the dusk hag wants the players to retrieve from the dragon's dreams, how to describe and people the dreamscape, and a bunch of other stuff.

Thoughts?

[DeeL]

The Yuan-ti make a natural component of such a setting.  So do the Shadowcasters from Tome of Magic, maybe with the twist of making them Dreamcasters instead, thus associating them more strongly to dreamscapes than the shadow plane.  

Incidentally, did you know that the Dreamer was the proto-prestige class?  Back in the 2E days, there appeared in dragon magazine the Dreamer.  They called it a semi-class, but in actuality it worked exactly like a 10-level prestige class.  At lvl 1 you got Lucid Dreaming, and by lvl 10 you were forcing other people to sleep and altering reality while you dozed.  Wish I still had access to that...

It might be interesting to intersect the undead and the world of dreams.  Undead typically can't be affected by mentalism, but if they were associated with the Dreamtime, maybe there would be a chink in their armor.

It's probably my recent forey into LoM talking, but for some reason I associate the giant skull with its semi-functional brain with the Brain Pools of the Illithids.  It might have the same stats.

Are you acquainted with the Palladium line?  There is a supplement for Nightbane that deals directly with the plane of dreams.  Mind you, the system always has to be restatted, but the Palladium books work great as idea mines.

I'll think about your other questions, and detail the Nightbane stuff if asked.  Later.

[SA]

Just off the top of my head:

What if the hag is so old that her memory of her years long past (centuries, if not millennia ago) is all but gone?  She sends the PCs into the dragon's dreamscape to capture one of its memories, a memory that was also once hers (perhaps she and the dragon shared a brief conversation, and in that conversation she imparted kowledge which the dragon remembers, but she no longer does).  With that memory, she might recall...

a) The location of her covey's eye, which was long lost.*

She may find, through observing the dream, that it is now in the possession of the royal family who treat it as little more than another gaudy gemstone.  She'll want it back.  Conversely, they may regard it as much more than a simple stone.  Perhaps they've been using it in their divination, or it is a magically charged heirloom, strengthened in power over the ages.  If this is the case, she might get a little pissed, because they won't want to give it back.  Much fun ensues.

(If it all goes peacefully, she may use her eye to help them)

b) A "dream echo" of the Ending Blade (or some other name), a knife forged in the darkest of nightmare realms aeons past, which severs mortal cords {kills 'em, y'all).**

With this echo, the wielder may end the life of one mortal.  However, that life is already predetermined; the blade passes through all others without effect.  Who is its edge destined for?  Do they yet live, or did they die long ago, when the dragon was still alive?  What use has the hag for this?  And what of the fate of the true Ending Blade, which ends the lives of All...?

*an important question to ask is: why couldn't she see through the eye to discern it's location?

**thought it would be fitting, considering the hag resemblance to the Moirae/Fates of Greek mythology, and their "shears which end the lives of men"

[beejazz]

Well, I may change the nature of the adventure so that the "oracle" has been kidnapped, giving players the chance to investigate, dungeon delve, and retrieve her from the dreamscape... but the knife idea is pretty friggin' sweet. Alternately, one that could kill someone in his/her dreamscape and consequently kill the real thing (like severing the silver cord... also very like the fates severing the string of a mortal's life).

Undead seem a very spirit world thing, but some do seem ridiculously appropriate for a dreamscape (ulgurstastas out of FF spring to mind, as do callers in darkness).

Also, yeah... what is nightbane anyway?

[beejazz]

More delays. Not this coming weekend. Maybe next.

[DeeL]

Nightbane is a secret monsters horror game (published by Palladium) in which the PCs believed they were normal humans until just before the game begins, at which time the realize that they are Nightbane, unaging and incredibly potent shapeshifters who have the ability to use a mirror to walk from this world to the World of Night, a sunless reflection of our own world ruled by demonic forces.  They can also traverse the astral plane and the Dreamstream, the 'world' produced by the human unconscious.  When a person is awake, the portal to their personal dreamscape is opaque and impassible, but when they are asleep someone in the dreamstream can enter and affect it, or use it as a portal to the real world or simply a peculiar method of communication.

Then there are the Dreamlords, esoteric masters of dreaming who withdraw utterly from reality into their own dreamscapes.  Within their own domains, their powers are truly godlike; in the real world, they are much more limited - but at high levels, they can pull someone from the real world into their place of power...

Palladium's philosophy of game design is a bit uneven, but from a player's standpoint it can be expressed as 'screw it, just give me the cool appearance and uber powers.'  But like I said, they do come up with new ideas with remarkabel prolificity.

[Captain Obvious]

In the Bastion of Broken Souls adventure they had templates for dreamborn creatures as well as for a dream golem (or sleep golem, i forget).
This may be useful. I'll try to think of other things

[Gremlin]

So, it seems dreams are material things.  Ok.  So, are dreams things in some other plane leaking into the minds of sleeping people, or is the dream world the physical manifestation of whatever people see when they're dreaming?

If the dreams are there first and leak into the minds of dreamers: Why is it that the dreams come into human heads in the first place?  Do they only come to certain people?  Is there, for instance, an isolated valley that the dreams can't get to, or a strange race that doesn't dream at all?  Who decides what dreams people see?  Can the beings in the dream world tell that they're being seen?  Do the sleeping humans actually enter this realm, or do they just see it?

If people make the dreams: What happens to the space the dreams take up when they exist?  Do all dreams appear on a single plane, or does each person have their own active demiplane?  Is every entity within the dreams its own being, or do the creatures there change form and roles to match the dreams?  Do they die when the dreamers wake up?  If so, are there people who have had their dreams "rebel" against them?  If somebody has a really powerful dream, can it ever gain enough power to escape into the real world?

With your three basic planes (Far Realms, Dreamscape, Spirit Realm) I can pull some parallels.  The FR and DS are both extensions of the human psyche.  Far Realms is madness, Dreamscape the subconscious.  If you used kind of a psionic-y explanation, the Spirit Realm could house disembodied consciousnesses.  So if you have them kind of radiating outward, you have the Material (the Thinkers withtin flesh), the Spirits (the Transcended Thinkers), the Dreamscape (flowing into the minds of the Thinkers), and the Far Realms (corrupting the Thinkers/created by corruption).  Maybe you could create other planes based off this concept: demiplanes devoted to human emotion, for instance.

[beejazz]

@DEEL: Holy Crap. Win.
@Team Discovery Channel: Bastion of Broken Souls?
@Gremlin: The question you asked in the beginning of your post is now one I have to find a way to make my players ask themselves.

Also, remember the phthistic (EPH)? I think I might know how to make one now. Tee-hee!

EDIT: Still no luck with scheduling, but I have some jobs now, so I may be able to pick up some resources and be better equipped.